abstract: Drawing on archival findings, feminist scholarship on interwar British literature, and recent interventions in sexuality studies, this article argues that Winifred Holtby’s South Riding (1936) critiques heterosexuality as an institution, engages with romance as a democratic form, and develops a Woolfian approach to sexual politics, unsettling familiar divisions in interwar British literary culture. Just like Sarah Burton, who tells herself “I was born to be a spinster, and by God, I’m going to spin,” the novel’s antifascism is presented humorously through parallels between the two protagonists and the opposite political personalities of Ellen Wilkinson and Benito Mussolini, who were both authors of romance novels known to Holtby.
Daniela Caselli (Sat,) studied this question.